Patent No. 10,837,961

Description:
This patent application embodies molecular imprinting technology which can be applied to a number of applications where molecular binding events are of interest. Molecular imprinting creates artificial receptors by the formation of a polymer network around a template molecule.These include the use of molecularly imprinted polymers as tailor-made separation materials, antibody and receptor binding site mimics in recognition and assays systems, enzyme mimics for catalytic applications, and recognition elements in bio-sensors. The stability and low cost of molecularly imprinted polymers make them advantageous for use in analysis as well as in industrial scale production and application. This technology allows the separation from conventional immunoassays into a new diagnostic by molecular imprint. This can be seen as a synthetic immunoassay that does not degrade with temperature or any other harsh environmental conditions.

Abstract:
Macromolecular imprinted silica particles (“MIP”) in the presence of polymer grafted carbon black are disclosed. The disclosed molecular imprinted beads can detect disease in body fluids. For the silica gel matrix, tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) was used as the backbone monomer and 3-aminopropy/triethoxysilane (APS) as a functional monomer. Carbon black was added to the sol-gel process, yielding black silica particles. Furthermore, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was used as a structure-directing agent to increase network diffusion of the template. A total of 16 MIPs were synthetized in parallel with variables that evaluate the role of key reactants in the synthesis procedure. Agglomeration tests were performed with all 16 MIPs in the presence of their template, alongside their respective controls using only phosphate buffered saline (“PBS”). Each of the MIPs was evaluated using a novel device capable of simultaneously measuring up to four samples for near infrared transmission.


UTEP Docket No: 2012-016